Stories written by Adrianne Appel Adrianne Appel has written for IPS since 2006 about U.S. domestic issues, including the environment, politics and economics. Formerly a politics reporter in Washington, D.C., she now reports from Boston. In 2010 she was awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship.

There was a time when big, yellow cats freely roamed the length of a wild Florida. Today, three medium-sized humans are trekking the length of this southeastern U.S. state - 1,000 miles of swamp, forest, ranchland and blistered feet - in hopes that panthers may one day be able to safely tread the same path.

Dozens of Immokalee Florida farm workers left tomato fields behind last week and set up camp on the lush, corporate grounds of Publix supermarket to fast and protest the company's refusal to pay a penny more per pound for tomatoes.

Stealthy submarine gliders slide through the depths of the Gulf of Mexico with the precision of birds of prey. Robot-like rovers search for droplets of oil thousands of metres under the surface. Powerful computerised analysers send instant results to scientists on board the ship above. All of this to assess the impact of disaster.

A crisis of foreclosures is twisting through neighbourhood after neighbourhood here, separating thousands of U.S. families from their homes each day and further unraveling the social fabric of low-income communities.

As the U.S. climate delegation arrives in Copenhagen nearly empty-handed, watchdog groups back at home say they know why: a political system gone astray due to the influence of huge amounts of corporate cash.

Big banks will not be forced to downsize and the public will be the last to know when they fail, a controversial bill unveiled by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Congressman Barney Frank proposes.

The weather was right for swimming this summer along the shores of Lake Michigan, but on many days, the only living things seen on the beach were gulls, picking away at zebra mussels ensnared in a thick, green slime that covered every rock, pebble and grain of sand for miles.

As all factions of the U.S. Congress continue a bruising debate about how to change the U.S. health system, one state, Massachusetts, seems to point the way clear, but activists say the Massachusetts plan is already troubled and doomed by skyrocketing costs.

Banks bailed out with U.S. taxpayer money, like Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp, are raking in money by charging 150 percent interest and more on short-term, payday loans to people with no savings, consumer advocates say.